SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE Late dangerous Petition presented to the House of COMMONS, September 11. 1648.  PROV. 22. 28. 
Remove not the ancient Landmarks or bounds, which thy fathers have set.  PROV. 24. 21. 
My Son, fear thou the Lord, and the King, and meddle not with them that are given to change.  
LONDON, Printed in the Year 1648.   

Some Observations on the late dangerous Petition presented to House of Commons September 11. 1648.  
HOw specious soever this Petition may seem to some, as whatever pretends removal of grievances is catching, yet upon a second view, you may observe a continued vein of dangerous sophistry wrapped up in Equivocal terms from the beginning to the end: so that to undeceive well-meaning people, it would require a more sad animadversion, than my present leisure, or indeed abilities can afford you.  
He that will hinder a Serpent's entrance, must mainly take heed to the insinuations of the head, which once admitted, steals in the whole body; Wherefore I will begin at the title, and unravel the whole piece, and in so doing, I doubt not to evince all, that when these Petitioners tongues are smoothest, their minds are roughest, when they give fairest language, their intentions are sowlest, sondly designing with Mercury in the fable to pipe out Argus his eyes, and imitate those thiefs, who rob with music.  
But withdraw the Curtain now. To the right Honourable and Supreme authority of this Nation the Commons in Parliament assembled The humble Petition, etc. Shows That no Government is more just in the Constitution then that of Parliaments. Join these together and spell them, you that pretend so great acquaintance with the constitution of an English Parliament: did you never hear of we the Lords and Commons, etc. If you think the constitution of Parliament just, do you think the conjunction of both houses unjust? Who are you that take upon you to legitimate one of these twins, and bastardise the other? Are you ignorant how they have been born and bred together? This was the old plot, Divide & Impera. The court aim, to divide the two Houses; they knew well enough the fall of the one, would be the evening of the others ruin, that the first could not be stifled, but the second would be strangled. Will you put a new cape upon an old cloak, and build upon a Malignant foundation? Sure some new light hath discovered unto these men, how to make a body subsist all of belly, for trial whereof they are whetting apace to cut off our Parliament at the waist; This is the reason why the Ordinances are styled Illegal in the Warning-piece, because the Lords have a hand therein: The Peers are the screen which stands between Prerogative and Liberty, and keeps each from scorching other; That Commissura cervicis which marries the head to the body; The mean between the extremes, A Gallery between Royalty and Property which makes them keep their due distance; They are lenitives, which alloy Monarchy, and of Mercury sublimate make it a wholesome medicine: In sum by their means we are famed and envied, for our happy mixed Government.  
And as the end of all Government is the safety and freedom of the Governed, etc. What do you quote the end of Government to the Parliament? for did they ever abridge just freedom? but what ever you talk of freedom, you mean licentiousness as is evident as well by the whole tenor of this Ochlocraticall Petition, as by the report of that warning-piece (but charged with murdering shot) which is but the construing Book of this, as appears by its complaint of the stop of this very Petition, and other seditious pamphlets, in the last page. Now what great difference is there between tyrannical and licentious Government? Are not both Arbitrary? The one pleaseth not good men, the other displeaseth wise men: The one can easily do evil, the other can hardly do good: in that the insolent have too much sway, in this the foolish, yet is there more hope in Tyranny, for be there one or two evil Princes like droughts of immoderate reins, and rivers overflowing their banks, a good successor like a fit of seasonable weather may repair the others breaches and render us our own● with Interest: but in an Anarchy what can be expected, but a never dying succession of confusion? There is a lively analogy between the populacy and the Sea, Both uphold only light things, let the heavy sink, witness the horrible ingratitude to their bravest Captains and best deserving Citizens of the Roman and Athenian people. However the Sea may sometimes deceive the eye, with the smoothness of its glassy surface, yet we know it always liable to storms & tempests & that as inconstant as the Planet whose influence moves it, it hath suddenly wrapped itself up in furred billows and devoured whom even now it smiled upon: Thus the unbridled multitude when at the calmest want but their flattering Orators to blow up their waves till they tumble and gather, than foam by mutual attrition then roar and rage till the mast cracks under the sails, the rudder deceives the hand of the Pilot, and anon the whole Ship of the Commonwealth split against the rocks of their inconsiderateness. Every head of this Hydra is another Aeolus who makes use of the popular winds viz. their affections, to reach the haven of his private aims, and then shift for yourselves. Of this tribe seems to me the primum mobile of this Petition, whom I vehemently suspect to be some Licinius or Sextius that gapes for the first fruits of a Plebeian Consulate. And to make it the most absolute and free nation of the world. I am here extremely puzzled how to tie ●● the end of Goeurnment and absolute liberty into one knot neither with all my tugging can I make the one's end reach the others beginning for what need Government where every man according to their principles may be his own Governor, or do they mean their Governors should be like glass eyes in a blindman's head for fashion not use? Tell us in plain terms what you mean by most absolute and free: If you mean an unrestraint in doing good, 'tis every true, Patriots wish that piety and virtue may be the only ways to honour in this nation and that hereafter good men may reap some other recompense besides the conscience of their own well do: but if your sense of absolute freedom stretch to an unlimited freewill to do what ever shall seem right in your eyes, to act your own dreams where a●d when you please without fear of control, in contempt of authority, all which you daily practise; If this be the, Butt you shoot at, give me leave to invert your maxim, and tell you, that the end of all Government is indeed the safety of the Governed, in curbing that licentious and absolute freedom here aimed at, a●d in restraining that Liberum arbitrium, in conceit whereof all flesh is so prone to swell. But this is the common sin of Prince and People who caught with the same fallacy, wherewith the Devil foiled our first Parents and not content with the safe freedom of knowing and doing good, are still fancying an additional perfection till they are justly left miserably free to bewail the loss of their original power, and fall from their primitive estate of freedom.  
Next ●ollowes a Catalogue of their grievances; They begin with the house of Lords (though not vouchsafed that title viz. of a house) whose just convening of Delinquents before them, they compare to the former supercilious proceed of the Conncell board: but how justly we shall see, by examining the argument. Some Court Lords who moved but by the wire of their master's passions did amiss; therefore no more Lords are to be trusted: Divers particular Noblemen usurped an illegal authority over their inferiors, some out of arrogance, others only by imitation; therefore the house of Peers now acting as a court of Judicature according to the known laws, is repugnant and destructive to the Commons just liberty, how does this comparrison hold.  
1. And therefore in the first place you will be exceeding careful to preserve your just authority, from all prejudices of a negative voice in any person or persons whatsoever &c. and that you will not be induced to lay by your strength, till you have satisfied your understandings, in the undoubted security of yourselves, and those who have voluntarily and faithfully adhered to you, etc. Here you tell the House of Commons in plain terms, the Lords are but cyphers, which added indeed to their figure increase the sum, but of themselves make no number, whence learned you this Parliamentary Arithmetic? Since when came an Ordiance to be of no more force than an Order? this is to tell the Supreme authority of this Nation, that they understand not themselves, nor their Privileges, when they desire, to any thing, the Lords concurrence: You'll alter your tone shortly, and tell the House of Commons too, they shall be Supreme no longer than they please you. Doth not the same spirit of wildfire, which here breathes upon the Nobility drive equally against Lords and Commons in the Warning-piece? Where their Counsels are termed destructive, their Votes, votes for Norman bondage, their Ordinances Illegal, where the Whole body of the City is railed against and no other term bestowed, then Proud Malignant, Illegal Major of London, and his like brethren the Aldermen, and a few illegal Common-council men. Who sees not by your insolent carriage, that your venom is against all distinction of Orders? while you may be permitted to spit your poison in secret, and to hatch young Cockatrices in your mysterious seminaries, you p●t on a v●zard of zeal to the House, and are sure to hoist up title enough; (enough to drown them, if they set sail therewith) but upon the least alarm against your party, they shall be no more the Supreme authority of this Nation. But the vile of the House and their Confederates, a company of Traitors to God and their Country, for thus are they already styled in the Warning-piece; Nay, King, Parliament, Priest and People are there inveighed against. I wonder whence these are, who are comprehended under none of those. Shortly we shall have some of these seditious Tribunes step up, and prefer Agra●ias leges: Is it not against the Common● privileges to suffer any enclosure? Why should any Patrician possess more land than a Plebeian? hath not the one as much of Adam's blood in his veins as the other? The truth is, they fear the State of Licinius, condemned by his own Law De quingentis jugeris possidendis, and therefore aim at nothing less than an equality, or extension of the Commons privileges. How pregnant is histories of examples of such as always pretended the ease of the Beast, till themselves got into the saddle, and then who road harder than they? who ever tyrannised more than these kind people, who now wear the pleas of Liberty and Conscience threedbare, where they have enjoyed but an inch of Government? Let all Histories ancient and modern speak. Let none of my Countrymen therefore be kindled by these Jack-strawes, who will in conclusion burn themselves, and those who are set on fire by them. Learn to know, that in a well ordered Commonwealth, there is nothing more unequal than equality; let not the hands strain to submit the head to the feets trampling, lest the neck of the body be thereby broken. You know what became of the divisions between Abimelech and the men of Sichem; if you opinionatly persecute the house of Abimelech, a fire may issue thence, when you little dream thereof and consume you. Pray what got Athens by the Fines, imprisonments, banishments of their Nobility? Even as much as Rome by their Agrarian laws, and other encroachments of the Tribunes upon the Patrician privileges, which fits of convulsion extinguished that flourishing Commonwealth. During the War between the Florentines and Millanesis, an dom. 1427. The popular faction at Florence having abated the insolence of the Granders, by subjecting their moveables, and other goods to proportionable taxes, began now to swell, and not content with present redress of grievances, fell to ripping up old sores, and demanded satisfaction of the Nobility for all unequal levies passed: Indignation whereat had occasioned (saith my Author) the conjunction of the Nobility and Gentry with the common Enemy, (as upon the like occasion they had formerly called in the Duke of Athens) had not john de Medici timeously stopped the flux of these peccant humours, remonstrating the folly of fretting at old wounds, when they ought rather to prevent new; and if their usage had formerly been unjust, they ought to thank God, who had showed the way to make it just, and content themselves with a middle-sized victory: For he frequently undoes who overdoes. 'Twas an ancient arcanum, Non in omnia delicta, nec in singulos Authoresinquirere. Who ever desires a Map of our English chaos, let him turn to the Florentine History, where he shall find the mutual obstinate persecutions of the factions, ever barking at the present government, to have strangled that Commonwealth, and introduced a Tyranny, under which they yet groan; His ego gratiora dictus alta esse scio: sed me vera progratis loqui etsi meum ingenium non moveret, necessitas cogit, Vellum equidem vobis placere, Quirites, sed multo malo vos salvos esse, etc.  
This devolving so much upon the people causeth a double evil. 1. Honour's are heaped upon such as having never tasted thereof, relish them the less, and have less occasion (going without them) to complain. 2 They are taken away from such, as having been accustomed thereto, will never rest till they be restored; as the Sea after a storm never leaves tumbling and tossing till his waves are leveled. Thus the injury on the one part, out weighs the benefit on the other, and for few friends, you make many enemies, who will always be more ready to hurt, than those to help you; Since men are naturally more prone to revenge of injuries, than recompensation of benefits, this seeming to import damage and loss, the other profit and pleasure.  
In the other branch of this Article, you desire the Parliament not to disband, before they have well provided for their own safety, and their adherents. All their Adherents, that I know, would be glad to see Armies disbanded places disgarrisoned and the poor wasted Countries in some measure eased; as soon as the Parliament shall judge it safe, whose very being induced thereunto is argument enough to their modest friends of its safety. But who induces them to divest their strength? any thing save reason? what sauciness is this to charge Supreme Authority, with so supreme weakness, as that they are apt to be induced to things against their own understandings? They know their greatest strength lies in the people's hearts, and out of mere returns of love have entertained a ●ender care of their disburdening, as far as wisdom will dictate. But who told you they were voring down the Army? Nay you knew the contrary, by their late Votes for a new establishment under Sir Thomas Fairfax, unless you interpret the voting of some Troops for Ireland a disbanding; however it be, the Votes were already passed long before this bastard Petition was borne, and which renders your impudence inexcusable, in your magisterial demands of undoing what you knew was already done. But you love o walk in clouds, and may you at length embrace a cloud in stead of your ambitioned Juno, shall be my prayer: In plain English you are loath to see this Army by sub-divisions enfeebled, upon whose strength you rely for support wherein you think are many props of your extravagancy: you fancy to yourselves wings out of their feathers, and therefore unwillingly see any quill dropped; foundlings, you dream! The bulk of the Army are otherwise possessed; The sounder part begin to smell your rottenness; I know not by what misfortune, you have not so close girt your Lambskins of late, but that you, Fox linings have appeared.  
2 That you will take off all Sentences, Fines and Imprisonments, imposed on Commons by any whomsoever, without due course of Law, or judgement of their equals and to give due reparations to all those who have been so injurioush dealt withal, and for preventing the like for time to come that you will enact all such arbitrary proceed to be capital crimes. Here is a fine spun net to catch the simple: but what greater enemy to truth then likehhood? If you understand by due, har ordinary course of law what Malignant could speak higher language, or find, fit engine wherewith to batter down what ever the Parliament hath been rearing up these five years? The safety of the governed, the end of government (to speak in your own dialect) hath occasioned the doing of many things above the ordinary course of law: strange diseases, unknown to Galen and Hypocrates, have forced our State Physicians to new ways of cure. If shame forbids you now the owning this construction, all the sense I can squeeze of this expression, is a charge upon the Parliament for their commitment of some of your mutinous rabble, for which yet you would be loath to stand to the due course of law. Dare you talk of the due course of Law, which you labour to overthrow in divers Articles of this very Petition? The complaint were juster, that the Laws are no more duly executed upon such troublers of our Israel. So when you demand reparations, you must unfold the riddle, for verily to us poor Ignorants you speak in parables. I think you intent not Delinquents compositions be restored, although its possible, to get some of their hands to your Petition you may have gratified them in this Article. For whom else hath the Parliament fined, sentenced, or imprisoned? O, it's true, I had forgot Rabshakeh Lilbourne, whose sufferings merit at least Letters of recommendation, to his namesake, John of Leyden K. of Munster, for the office of Grand Master of his Ordnance.  
3 That you permit no authority, etc.) Agai ne, so fierce for legality? long may be in this good humour I But I am afraid you will shake hands with it at the next turning. In the mean time let's examine whence cometh this zeal against an Oath ex Officio; is it not because they abhor the very name of duty? will you allow never a grain more to the Parliament then Star-chamber? Mu what this assumes for the present be unwarrantablebecause the other used it? sundry emergenciesdaily happen which escape the foresight of the most provident Lawgivers, who therefore have in every State, betrusted some with a Prerogative, whereby the supreme Magistracy is empowered to provide in cases extra legal for the Common wealth's indemnity. The rule indeed usually holds Nemo tenetur seipsum prodere but if the State judge it expedient for the discovery of any Jesuit, or Jesuitical— shall not the Public Obtain that favour which the Law allows in case of Private interest? A clear conscience fears not the touch stone, and whoever innocent starts from the trial is therein nocent because contemptuous. Only such owls as you, dread discovery and fly the day, therefore, whatever you may boast of your new lights they are at best but candle lights.  
4 That all statutes, Oaths and Covenants may be repealed etc. What an ambush of Banditi is here broken out against the poor Statutes? Did not I tell you what would become of your pleas for legality? My Gentlemen are already skipped from the Law, to a false Gospel: but no wonder they snarl here at men's Statutes when they bark in the next at God's Ordinances What a bitter pill is this same Covenant? These Ostriches who so easily swallow iron (they swoon at the noise of disbanding cannot digest the Covenant: oh this lies hard at their heart for why? it is a Shibboleth whereby the mutionus Ephramites are discovered; I commend Vulcan's ingenuity out of whose forge came the warning piece who although he halt villainously in other matters, yet tells you like an honest rogue the Covenant is Antitichristian because it distinguishes the vile of the house from the faithful of the house what unparallelled malapertness is this to demand the abrogation of our laws, the nullity of our solemn vows as far forth as they may be construed to their molestation? By whom shall they be construed? by you? we are like then to have pretty endless work: for you know you are not bound to believe to morrow, what you make us believe you do to day, so that should we model our laws to your present liking, before we had done you may have sprung a new opinion, or another tender-hooft Sect may arise and task us anew; May not Priests turn Independents, and with equal reason Petition against the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance? But you are peaceable and well-affected: I wish you may prove so, if you have helped us hitherto we see in this Petition by what hopes you were led, and that in the work you were well affected only to yourselves. For suppose a compliance with all your fanatic desires, which yet is impossible, you draw so unevenly among yourselves, would not your peaceable maxims suddenly set the Kingdom on fire with war, spiritual war, debates, heart-burnings, envies, strifes, contention? Read the histories of your forefathers, and tremble at their examples: Who pleaded more peace than the Germane Anabaptists, till they got the reins of government into their hands, and then what devils incarnate ever acted such villainies? O eat their footsteps who so desires to tread in the paths of life▪ Those Dutch Sectaries first, to make way for their innovations, that no regard of Conscience or fidelity sworn to the Magistrate might stop their proceed broached this doctrine, that all Oaths in the time of the new Testament were unlawful, and that therefore taken, or to be taken, they were of no validity. Ours only slice them as yet, and desire their qualification: when they have obtained this, they will have something else ready to obtrude upon us; for he that thinks they will ever be content, is to learn the nature of a Sectary: In the tail of this Article lies this venomous clause, That none may be disturbed for difference of opinion or practice in Religion: A worthy grievance! that every Enthusiast should not have his allowed Teraphim! nay, they are not content to believe as they list, nor to practise what they list, unless they have Letters of Mart to take up Proselytes. All they can catch must be lawful prize, and therefore they ask.  
5. That no man for preaching or publishing his opinion in Religion in a peaceable way may be punished or persecuted as heretical by Judges that are not infallible, but may be mistaken as well as other men in their judgements, lest upon pretence of suppressing errors Sects or Schisms, the most necessary truths and sincere professors thereof may be suppressed, as upon the like pretence it hath been in all ages. Mark how the Serpent creeps, and every where leaves a filthy shine behind him; Hitherto they never pretended more than a toleration, now they will have a patent under the broad Seal for public vent of their false ways, While they only used the buckler and weapons of defence, we pitied and connived at their weakness, supposing that nothing but a certain habit of private assemblings forced upon conscientious people by Prelatical tyranny without any other obstinacy, had continnued their withdrawings from public worship: But now that they furbish the sword and whet their teeth like sharp arrows, blow the trumpet with that man of Belial, Every man to his tents O Israel. It is high time to rub our eyes and watch their progress. Had they contained themselves within their desires and stuck to their Penates they might still have pleaded the ease of weak brethren: But that all markets should be open to their putid errors plainly shows they never intended them other then for sale and I appeal to all understanding Christians, and such as cherish the practice of piety and power of godliness, whether this be not a strain beyond the tedder of a tender conscience! Did not the Devil by these same instruments obstruct the growing reformation in Germany? They complain the Parliament and Assembly have done so little: Thanks to these Remoras? They should do less if they could hinder them. These vermin that ferret into by corners grawing ●ut the bowels of religion, and eating out the power thereof, first biting at Ministry, then at Magistracy these dungwagons make us stink in the nostrils of all neighbouring Nations. But for soothe their Judges are not infallible; Very true. If you ask seeing we may possibly err, how can we be assured we do not? I ask you again seeing, your eye sight may deceive you how can you be sure you see the Sun when you do see it. Perhaps you may be in a dream, and perhaps you and all the men in the World have been so, when they thought they were awake, and then only a wake, when they thought they dreamt. Because we challenge not an impossibility of erring, can we not be sure that all aught to be subject to the higher powers, (which you labour to kick off) and that all sowers of envy and strife and contentious persons are in the wrong, not to say what Saint Paul says that such shall not enter into the Kingdom of God? Because the Bishops imposed the nicknames of Puritan and Sectary, cannot we be sure they are your true names, and pity it is they should be Christian names? Do you think there ever was any such thing as Schism or faction? if so, give the Magistrate leave to find it out and punish it or else set up your standard and own it. What pity 'tis these men are not allowed to ride on a while! What a fine Egyptian miscellany of religions would be introduced! We should shortly have Mahomet the second appear with new revelations freshly coined in the mint of some Ulcerous brains the itch of whose wit daily breaks out into some new botch or boil, for which they deserve not little a clawing. Sure they have retrived St. Thomas his Gospel out of the Vatican and would expound it in their Synagogues. Profecto si essent in republica magistratus nullum futurum fuisse Romae, (vel Londinis) nisi publicum consilium: nunc in mille curias concionesque cum alia in esquiliis, alia in Aventino fiant consilia dispersam & dissipatem esse rempublicam? Under the notion of a new mystery crept in the Bachanalia to Rome a Seminary of the most horrid impieties, that ever were heard of yet veiled over with such a fair show of pure devotion that it was spread all over Italy before the Senate took notice thereof and then hardly with the death of many thousands, and banishment of more, could stifle this Grecian Independency.  
Do not many modern Libertines tread the same path, rending man and wife, Father and Son a sunder, breaking the nearest ●ands, and captivating simple souls into their new mysteries which hardly three or four of their whole tribe understand where for ought we know, they are innitiated into as arrant deeds of darkness as those of the Bacchanalia? I am sure these and the Germane Anabaptistick conventicles run but too parallel. Neither will thoughts of charity here satisfy a Master of a family, who is knowingly to rend accounted of all ●●ose committed to his care. But thus most necessary truths may be suppressed. Thus those errors which are necessary indeed for your building ●nd without the rooting whereof, your Babel will totte●, shall unsuppressed together with their insinuating Brokers, as upon the like 〈◊〉 it hath been in all ages. I will brand them in the forehead and leave them: They are Intruders into other men's labours, reaping where they have not sown, worthless drones who can by no emblem be livelier represented, then of Aunts, that rob others barns to increase their proper store stealers of corn for their own provisions, industrious for themselves to all others unprofitable: The true Pastor is not so, but l●ke a Bee innoxious, in-offensive, without any's prejudice gathers his honey for others, eating as pleasant as profitable.  
Yet again They are not satisfied that Controversies in Religion can be trusted to the compulsive regulation of any. No, that's agreed upon you are pretty well resolved against satisfaction. Must nothing then be done in a State, till 〈◊〉 mutineer be pleased to be satisfied, no law pass till every Cobbler be fi●st made to comprehend the reasons which urged the enacting? what if his brains be too swimming, and will not admit of impression? What if the Tinker tell us the Tavern is his meeting house, where he first draws the barrel dry, then sets himself a broach, and inspired by the spirit of wine, spits out his froth (miscalled preaching) in the same vessel? Truly sirs, you must come off your stilts, and have this principle beat into you; That not the Magistrate ought to render yo● reason, much less Gospel, for all his Ordinances; but unless you can dismount them with demonstrative arguments, not simple cavillations, out of God's word, God's word commands you to submit.  
Note. Two sorts of people offend in point of Religion, some have a depraved notion of God, and his worship, but confined to themselves; and these deserve a teacher, rather than a torturer, and to be dealt withal in the spirit of meekness. Others are not only Errones, but Turbones, stirrers as well as errors, and have sucked the same malice from their errors, as is said to be concomitant of the plague, viz. an itch of spreading their Leprosy. Now if it be felony to intrude into company with a Plague sore, what punishment deserve these soul infecters? Since the Jews for their malicious artifice in sowing the Pestilence, were justly banished many Countries, what shall be done to these, who by their Emissaries scatter their poison in all places? Either confine them to the Pest-house, or let them not walk without a white wand some distinguishing mark whereby they may be known and shunned. 'Twas a ● Heathens speech, Sen. de Ben. l. 3. cap. 6. Violatarum religionum ali●bi a●que aliubi diversa poena est, sed ubique aliqua; Better one perish then unity. Can an injury be done to God, and not us? Therefore Clemency is here cruelty: for certainly if the laws are binding only to moral duties, and lose to Christian, the Magistrate to us bears the Sword in vain.  
6 The Remonstrative part winds up the sixth grievance in these terms: The oppressive Monopoly of Merchant-Adventurers, and others do still remain, to the great abridgement of the Liberty of the People, and to the extreme prejudice of all such industrious people, as do depend on Clothing, or Woollen manufacture it being the staple Commodity of this Kingdom, and to the great discouragement of all Tradesmen, Seafaring-men, and hindrance of Shipping and Navigation. Grant all this to be true, yet you must give us leave to doubt of your honest meaning; for he that useth byways, is justly mistrusted when he keeps the road. The ingenuous are to be construed by their natures, the crafty, by their ends: The plain hearted seldom suppress their inclinations: The cunning man looks one way, rows another, and while he holds up artificial hands, with his natural under his cloak, cuts your purse. Here 'tis called a Monopoly, in the sixth Article ● Company, so that when they cry down this Company and others, till they explain, we may fear they strike obliquely at all the London Companies, at least of Merchants. And indeed this is but consonant to their doctrine, which urges an universal Community, and esteems every enclosure a Monopoly. But that, part hereof is false, and all the rest mistimed in the motion; The Western Gentlemen will bear me witness, who in the House have no small sway, and will for their own Interest have a special eye to Clothing, the chief riches of their Country, the West being the staple of this staple commodity.  
7 In the Preface I find these motives to your seventh Article. Also the old, tedious, and chargeable way of deciding suits in Law is continued to the undoing of multitudes of Families. The more undone, the better for you, for the poorest are aptest to embrace your doctrine of Community besides, whence comes this care of us, since all out of you● Church are Heathens in your account? No wonder, if your new worships love not to walk in any old way: But wiser men than you, who ever you are, did not use in old ways to stumble at every stone, nor to cast off old customs, till old customs were ready to cast off them, and if any law grew burdensome, they let it fall through disuse, and antiquated rather then innovated; Physicians will tell you it is unsafe to disturb an evil settled humour, and when an infirmity hath kept possession twenty, thirty, forty years, 'twere madness to try experiments upon an aged body. Many Mountebanks, indeed by boasting their new receipts, as you do, often find some impatient fool or other. who had rather die quickly, then live in a little pain, and weighs not the hazard, in respect of the dispatch. But we poor mortals are content to think the old way the safest, till your new lights discover a better, for a Tinker will tell you, 'tis easier to find holes than mend them. Again, you shoot beyond the Moon, when you style this the most palpable and greatest grievance in the world; For who so knows any thing in Foreign affairs, knows there is never a Kingdom in the Christian world, where the course of law is more regular less ●edious, and consequently less chargeable, although indeed, their Fees be lesser, then in England; Nay therefore is the Foreign way more tedious, because less chargeable, therefore in demanding a more speedy, plain, unburdensome way of deciding controversies, and the publication of our Laws in English, you do like the sons of Zebedee, and ask you know not what. Sure I am in France and other parts, where the Fees are moderate, and the Laws in their own language, there are a hundred Families to our one, utterly ruined by suits which continue from Father to Son, even to the third and fourth generation, for where it costs but twelve pence a time, every one will run to the Physician, and where every worm eaten cankered fellow can have his Advocate for his half crown, the least Punctilio must be pleaded, and the smallest difference turn to a Process. There is another reason of their mischief: For where the Law is not locked up, as it were in a strange character, as with us, but the way easy, and the door open for all comers; Every Peasant's son leaps to the Bar, till Lawyers swarm like Locusts, as in France, whereas their principal study must be in each Village to sow and foment divisions, for fear of starving? Do not we frequently see fellows otherwise quarrelsome enough, & mutually incensed commit their differences to the arbitrement of neighbours merely for fear of charges? And if yet some peevish people will never be well till they have paid for it, how outrageous would they be when they might disquiet others with ●esse detriment to themselves? for my part I cannot but esteem it wisely done of our State to fix some difficulties upon the study of the Common Law, which were they all removed we should soon have all England full of brawls because full of leaders even as now the facility of going to Law tempts many near to London and Westminster to their utter undoing who had they lived in Wales or Lancashire would never have dreamt thereof. Well but is this all? are they content to accuse our Laws of injustice: no they further require that they be reduced to the nearest agreement with christianity & that all process and proceed therein may be true that so this nation may be freed of an oppression more burdensome and troublesome than all the oppressions hitherto by this Parliament removed.  
How furiously th●se Jeh●'s drive boasting their zeal for the Lord pray God it end not as Iehu's in the accomplishment of their own ends. In the interim we stand deeply charged: with Paganism, what no less than unchristian? I confess they are ancient yet can hardly believe K Alfred fetched his Laws from China or that our forefathers have sinceborrowed any of the Turkish Aleoran or Jewish Talmud althoughall these have many excellent constitutions, As impertinent, is the other charge of untruth upon the proceed which is an arrant falsehood. But give the child his babble before he cry I suppose now the Law's in English without any abbreviation, all fees limited and in print, will it therefore follow this nation shall be for ever free? you Platonics may please yourselves with your fine Ideas, but verily you seem to understand the world as ittle as you understand yourselves, and those that know you say that's little enough, The regular usual fee of a Physician's but ten shillings yet whether to engross the Doctors care or out of ostentation. I know not by what means it's come about that between the Physician and Apothecary many are purged of superfluities and are hardly left so much gold in their purses, as there is about their pills, whose fault is this now? must each man's fault be laid upon the State's shoulders? so were the Counsellors highest legal fee, a piece, might not one all whose hopes lay at stake in one cause underhand quicken his diligence with ten The like a second and a third in a like necessity, till the wheels run in the old tract? Nay may he not with more equity demand of me ten pounds, in some cause then one in another? should the fees be prescribed according to the p●eaders pains, or the causes importance? for may not a business of mighty concernment be often dispatched with less trouble than a petty but knotty case case can be opened? as you may sooner read two chapters in a fair legible character then one in a small impression. Again how can a Lawyer's pains be estimated? either in the well timing a motion (for every business hath its golden hour) or in the manner, or in the choice of the matter, or in the expedition, a hundred ways order it how you can, an active faithful man's pains are invaluable, and in many cases cannot be weighed in other balances than those of discretion To conclude, you may as easily make a coat for the Moon as limit Lawyers sees. Something perhaps might be amended, and will in time convenient, but to make such a mountain of this mole hill, as in comparison thereof to make nothing of the Starchamber, High Commission, Court of Wards, and all other Court tyranny makes manifestro all who eye your practices that there lies a snake under this green grass; once I will be your Oedipus and unfold this riddle. I find in my story of M●●tzer that Arch-Anabaptist, among other his tenants That justice and judgement under the new Testament ought to be framed and administered only out of the word of God ●y which doctrine he made the poor People of ●huringia believe their Laws and Governments were unlawful, and challenging to himself by degrees the cognizance of all both Ecclesiastical and Civil matters. Our Anabaptists are not yet grown big enough to speak plain and therefore whisper in their preachments that there are stronger truths to be revealed but we are not yet able to bear them. First our Laws must be disgraced and accounted as remote from Christianity, no doubt because they are not all drawn out of the Gospel. Next our Parliament must be bespattered because they will not alter them to their minds: then will some contrary justinian commend himself to the people, by condemning our Statutes for tedious, and extracting a quite-essentiall Law out of his chimerical revelations, which his Sectaries shall cry up for Gospel. Whosoever reads me, read but the lives of these Plebicolae, and after a month or two's observation you shall find them singing Absalon's tune in every corner to the people; Your matters are good and right but there is no man deputed to hear you O that our Gospel might unco prevail in the land, that every man that every man that hath any suit or cause might come unto us and we would do them justice. The whole bent of their wit all their turn, and wind and fetches; tend but to this to possess the people against the present Government for this they affirm as many divers shapes as Proteus, with the honest minded insinuating a certain mysterious strictness of conversation with the ambitious, they deal by communications of honours, telling them what a sweet thing it is to be looked upon as chief of a party, that its better being the head of a Cat then the tail of a Lion; But deal how you can with them they will amuse and hold you in suspense, but you shall never squeeze out of them what they would have, nor indeed can they tell you being resolved to set up more or less sail according as the wind shall blow. Mark this phrase in conclusion. To the nearest agreement with Christianity as if Political Laws could not quite agree therewith, or we be other than mongrel Christians while we retained any. This is pure Liberty.  
8. That the life of no person may be taken away under the testimony of two witness to do it upon the testimony of one you say is contrary to the law of God or common equity. This is a grievance you have learned by revelation, for I find no such thing in our laws: Indeed in some cases of main importance for the example, where many circumstances compose a chain of strong probabilities concurring with the deposition of a disinteressed eye witness I say in some such rare case the law allows punishment of a notorious offender; And what can you pick out of this b●ne now? But you must be applauded for the sole deliverers from all bondage? And that in an equitable way you will proportion punishment to offences so that no man's life be taken away his body punished nor his estate forfeited but upon such ●eighty and considerable causes as justly deserve such punishments. What your Synagogues account just we neither know nor care, but there is no man punished by the laws in any of these respects without such cause as the whole Kingdom of England for many, many hundred years successively have deemed weighty And that all prisoners may have a speedy trial? Amen so be it, and may yours lead the dance; that they be neither starved, nor their families ruined by long and lingering imprisonment. And that imprisonment be only used for safe eustody not punishment. To a Gentleman complaining of the dearnes of Sack, his companion merrily answers, If it were at a crown the quart we should have fewer drunkards: So say I, if persons were yet more troublesome persons would be more orderly; you see as bad as they are, there are still enough found, that by their folly or obstinacy will venture the going thither. But now what if there arise crimes of contumacy, obstinate opini●●nesse, sedition, pertinacity in speaking evil of dignities, etc. By the practice of all the Commonwealths that ever I read or heard of, Imprisonment hath been judged the most expedient punishment. 1. Because these crimes are of a diffussive nature and therefore confinement the most proper remedy. 2. That solitariness might breed in their minds, reflex thoughts and so occasion repentance. 3. The indulgence of the magistrate could pitch upon no milder way unless he should proclaim impunity for all crimes not capital; This being the ordinary gradation of such, that the first fault draws on Imprisonment, and sometimes fine, continuation in it Banishment, surreptuious return from exile, or a third guilt of the same crime death, What interest you have in deprecating such penal proceed, Let your own Consciences determine.  
Another fool's bolt is shot against tithes & all other enforced maintenance and that nothing in place thereof be imposed but that all Ministers may be paid only by those who voluntarily choose them, and contrace with them for their Labours. That is being interpreted, that excepting London and the adjacent Counties, all Ministers should be expelled the Realm of England, and how many think you would be left in the Dominion of Wales? Truly considering the pretty ma● age we live in; I wonder no such whimsycall Petition as this was ever tendered, Humbly shewiug etc. That whereas for divers years passed there have been sundry differences happened in and about Religion to the detriment of the public peace, They would be pleased to order a suspension of all the Ministry for 12. months, till all contentions about God's worship cease. How think ●ou? would not hands enough be got thereto? I, and seals too: Within a while people would be so far from disputing of God. that they would never think of him, your Petition hath the sa●e sense. under other terms. The old Proverb was Like Priest, like People and both were bad enough; But if it be inverted, Like People, Like Priest, we shall see famous contracts, and a● worthy labours all performed in a blind alehouse. If tithes came so hardly. when exacted from them by authority, is it to be imagined, their contributions will flow in more liberally? The naked truth is this; If these shocks were out of the way john or Leydens' Prophets might happily reap the better harvest; for its probable they would plant their Gospel, with equal zeal to the Spaniards in the Indies. We are told there is no ground for either under the Gospel. A simple cavil: The whole Orthodox Church of God for these fourteen or fifteen hundred years, that is ever since any Churches were established, have acknowledged more than abundant ground for both; Now because these fanatic dreamers find it not couched in so many Letters and syllables, they most simply yet most wickediy cry down all legal maintenance and upon the same ground all our other laws: For tithes or any other maintenance were never urged by us as a precept of the Gospel, but as the law of England, and therefore in the seventh Petition they in effect demand the abrogation of all our laws because not expressly contained in the Gospel there termed Christianity: Yet I need not grant them thus much for all sound Christians acknowledging a perfect harmony in the word, that the old Testament is but Christ under the veil, and the new Moses unveiled its enough for us to practise what God thought fit to be enjoined in the one, till we find it positively, or by strong inference (for we will not tie them so strictly to it as they do us) retracted in the other. But this is another dream of these Pseudo-Evangelists to oppose Moses and Christ, contending that the doctrine of faith delivered in the old and new Testament is divers in substance and that Christ in the new Testament proposed quite a new doctrine. Those that will be blind, Let them be blind still; But God forbidden the whole Kingdom should therefore put out their eyes.  
10. That you will take some speedy and effectual course to relieve all such prisoners for debt as are altogether unable to pay, that they may not perish in prison, through the hard heartedness of their Creditors, that the potion may go down the better, they annex this clause as a gobbet of sugar and that all such who have estates may be enforced to make payment and not shelter themselves in Prison to defraud their Creditors. This was wisely moved believe me; could you but set the do●res open and proclaim Jubilee to all prisoners you might happily gain no small store of Proselytes, your communion of goods would take fire here like Gunpowder; how quickly would such as have nothing left, cry halves with their neighbours,? but by your leave, t●i● motion ●ad been juster that some stricter punishment besides prison may be inflicted upon all such desperate spendthrifts as will rather obstinately hazard the perishing in prison through their hard heartedness to their Creditors then bate an ace of their vain expenses wherewithal to discharge the debt. Sure while the worst of it is a retreat to prison' where many ●ive jollily and in riot they bear up as long as they may and then let posterity sink or swim. Now admit the worst what proportion is there between the ruin of one man who hath spent his days in vanity and folly and the whole family's desolation? They err who think punishments invented only for the offenders; they are for example sake and to deter others. Are not many for crimes, which by reason of age or other impediments they are no more able to commit yet hanged up for scarre-Growes? It's a most unjust custom of the Hollanders, when any man is attached for murder, the people usually help him to escape with this boorish argument one man is killed already, why should we lose another? most foolish pity, yea most wicked! I myself have known a dozen murders in one year by this means escape unpunished, all which might possibly have been prevented, had the first murderer been hanged. Those who pity not themselves who can pity? and in case of suretyship the usual weakness of soft natures, or whatsoever else may merit regulation, we leave it to those whom it concerns without imposing our sense upon the supreme Magistrate.  
[11 In the next place here is a great stir about Prison keepers, & their under Officers, I will join with you herein, and wish they may be of approved honesty, but rather wish it, then hope it, for I know not by what fare, they have never been better than they are; The contagion of the place, I think, infects them. But that you should now foist this in, to make up your Bakers dozen of grievances, is most, most ridiculous! What a happy condition were we in, if we lay under no greater burden than this of Knavish Prison-Keepers. It's a sign you have little to say, when you interrupt the State-proceeding with such petty matters: Is not this a worthy business, think you, for the Parliaments cognizance, in the midst of the greatest difficulties, that ever Parliament groaned under? This is with Rachel to say, Give me children or else I die: Is the Parliament in stead of God? Sometime you revile them, here you deify them. Can they make men honest? they may indeed displace knaves, but to hinder others from becoming as bad, is not their work but Gods; Must the State be troubled with the placing and displacing every under Officer? There is one mysterious phrase lurks here, That they may detain no person or persons without lawful warrant. Do they otherwise? why do not those detained exhibit their complaints? for this is absolutely illegal, and the Prison-keeper would be sound fined in any Court of England: So that 'tis frivolous here to trouble the supreme Court. Stay a little, for I profess, I can't pick sense enough out of this to fill a nutshell, except you mean a Parliament Warrant is unlawful; for who else hath committed any? 'Tis even so, The House of Peers, or a Committee of Commons, hath sent some of your Knipperdollings to prison for their rudeness, and this makes you plead so hard for prisoners; All the rest of the Article was but a shooing-horn to draw on this clause. But I would wish you to be more modest, and not to harp too much upon this string. for vetily, if you scratch your Superiors too hard, you may chance draw the smart upon yourselves. Qui nimis emangit, sanguinem elieit.  
12 That you will provide some powerful means to keep men, women and children from begging, and wickedness, that this Nation may be no longer a shame to Christianity therein. I am confident no Nation under heaven hath better provided for the poor by laws, than ours, nor any where, Holland excepted, are they better executed: name me any Kingdom in Christendom where are fewer poor? besides that, many who seem poor among us are but counterfeit, and beg out of wantonness, out of a vagrant humour of Libertinism, which me thinks, you of all others should not gainsay. Nevertheless I deny not but they might be better ordered, and would be in that Government which you so much withstand. It cannot be unknown to you also, how the City for their parts, have been of late consulting hereabout; so that it ill becomes you Plebicola, to act the Publicola, and to commend yourselves to the people for the first movers of that, which hath been above these twelve months, to my knowledge, in agitation, and that's a point beyond motion. But such is your arrogance, as that you would infer to the people, that no body sees their grievances, but you, all the rest of the world is blind, and hardly can you afford the Parliament one oye as the Chinesis do the Europeans. And whence (I pray) this tender regard of the poor? do not we know that we are all Infidels in your esteem? What care you for all the poor in the world, that are out of your congregations? Verily of all graces, you have least cause to brag of charity. Well, I say no more, but wish your heart may here have kept your tongue company; So shall I hope, you may in time come to be honest Elders, since you are already so stont Deacons.  
13 The last is a Voluminous complaint, 1. That men call them by their names, of Sectaries, Schismatics, factious, etc. 'Tis well they are ashamed of the name, 'twere better they were ashamed of the thing; they disavow the titles, but not the tenants. Their argument runs thus; All honest people, and such as would not conform to the superstitions under Episcopacy, the then present Government, were formerly most unjustly reproached as Puritans, Heretics, Schismatics, etc. therefore neither are we truly so called for resisting the present Government, (Although all those stumbling blocks be now removed, and so the reasons why you refuse to join with us yet invisible.) I will match their Argument, and then turn them both lose to stand or fall together. In the reign of Queen Mary, divers Socinians suppressing their blasphemous tenants, and only preaching against adoration of Images, Purgatory, Invocation of Saints, and other popish superstitions, are therefore taken for Protestants, and together with the true Protestants persecuted as Heretics for opposing Papistical Government. Afterward in the beginning of Q. Elizabeth's reign while the reformed discipline of the Church was yet unsettled, they begin to peep as from under the mask, and by degrees to appear in their own likeness, seducing many simple people, who had admired them for their zeal 'gainst the Papists. Now if these men apprehended for their horrid blasphemies against the Trinity, and other fundamental Articles of our Creed, should come and plead not guilty, because the best Christians had been branded with the name of Heretics, as well as they, deny that they were Scmsmaticks, although they rend the Church, and obstructed the reformation because the most godly had likewise refused to commonicate with the Papists, I suppose you would think this inference more worthy of laughter than an answer. We do not say some of you are Heretics, and others of you are Schismatics, because so called; but we call you so, because you are so: Neither do we term you factious and seditions; only because you refuse to conform to the present government, but for that you therefore refuse it, because injoy●●d by the Magistrate, out of a pure spirit of contradiction whereby you sh●ke the foundations of all Authority. And therefore to your s●c●●d branch of this Article, That you will not exclude any of approved f●●●lity from bearing office of trust in the Commonwealth for nonconformity. I return this answer: If any remain unsatisfied in any point of the present government, and be ready modestly to render a reason of his non conformity, no doubt he shall be borne withal, and not excluded therefore from any office of trust; for such a one will be content to keep his opinions to himself. But we know that most of you value not that toleration which allows not the spreading of your Heresies, wherefore we have as little reason to trust you, as the Protestants in the former case to have trusted the Socinians, who might have pleaded as much fervour against the Papists, as you can against the Royalists. What are we the better for your milk, if now you kick down the pail? If you are good, and do good, shall you not be accepted? and if you do not good, sin lies at the door, and punishment under the threshold. You say you are the Parliaments real friends, but I am sure you show little respect, and less friendship, when you tell them (to their face? Nay, to the face of the whole world) that their Promotion of Malignants is the chief cause of all our grievances. Lastly, that you may end like yourselves, you tell the Parliament, they are going to leave this Nation in great thraldoms both of body, mind, and estate (is vot this to hunt counter to the title of right Honourable in the beginning?) the sole prevention whereof consists in the granting your humble desire, without which this Nation cannot be safe and happy This is a very humble conclusion indeed! but something unlike a Petition to say you must have what you ask, and cannot be without it. B●ggars had not wont to be choosers till of late, can you tell be●●t what's proper for the Parliament to gra●● than they themselves? you pretend I contesse, the general good of the Commonwealth, but it your lives and conversations you walk more like our Antipodes then our Countrymen.  
But I am weary of raking in this dunghill. He that would know what we may justly fear from this Gallimaufry of E●cour● let him read Spanhemins Historical natration of the Germane Sectaries, where in the beginning of the second Chapter, you shall meet with a description of our present calamities: Those that are unacquainted with History are apt to think all Relations of such proceed ●abulous, so ridiculous and santastick are many of their principles. But so much the more dangerous are the effects, because we are so prune to slight the causes. Mark but the progress of Heresy in all ages, and you will easily discover whether we are going: for that which hath been, shall be, and there is no new thing under the Sun. The pretences have alalwayes been the same, of sweet communion, and increase of knowledge, the progress the same, the casting of the Ordinances of Magistracy, and Ministry, the event the same, the trouble of the Church for a while, but ever in the end their own confusion. The storm of Persecution was no sooner blown over in the Primitive times, than those civil wars of Religion began to divide the Church, and so from time to time interchangeably continued till all settled in a gross fog of ignorance under Popery: Again, God no sooner stirred up Luther and his fellows to reform, than the Devil transforming himself into an angel of light, stirted up the Anabaptists to retard and corrupe the reformation. And how? by exclaiming against it as imperfect, condemning Luther for a flatterer of Princes, as if he had left the people under tyranny, and had not preached the full liberty of the Gospel; by which doctrine and cruel indulgence of the Migistrate in a short space they drew after them whole armies of licentious people, and lead them against their Princes. Which example puts me in mind of Appius, saying in Livi●, Non miserris, sed l●eentia tantum concitum 〈…〉: ●t lasciv●re magis pl●bem quam savire. All the fury is derived from the heads of these factions, the rest are mad by contagion. To wind up all in a Character of our Petitioners: 1. The whole rabble of them, is a beggar's cloak made up of divers patches. A fair well built body to the eye but uncase it, and you find an ill shapen carcase covered over with a thick crust of appearances. 2. Their voice is jacobs', but their hands are Esan's. 3. Their defigne is to clog the Parliament with endless intricacy of work, that they may scape in the crowd unseen, till the Monster be full grown, and then lock it in the face who dare. Every good Patriot weigh well, and consider their actions! Trace them afar off, but tread not in their footsteps: Hearken rather to Solomon. Prov. 22. v, 8. Pro. 24. v. 21. Remove not the ancient landmarks which thy Fathers have set, and again. My son fear thou the Lord, and the King: and meddle not with them that are given to change. If God challenge the firstlings, give the Magistrate the second fruits of thine Obedience.  
FINIS.